Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday April 02, 2007 @05:02PM
from the plure-jealousy dept.

atbarboz writes "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat. 'Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.'"

Users who call up a company they have no relation to in order to tell them their tech decisions are bad are complete morons. Linux is an OS, not a religion. If a company wants to run Oracle Linux, Red Hat, BeOS, Windows ME, or Mac OS 7 is completely their choice to make.

And only four production. Why is this news even relevant? Is this the BIGGEST RH -> Oracle transition yet? I mean, eight servers... please, that's a pretty damned small Linux environment. On top of that, they even had a good reason to switch. I think the whole article is meant as flamebait. Of course none of you read it...

It appears that the need for religion is hardwired into human beings. If they reject religion, they tend to find a new one. Some believe in global warming. Some in their political party. Some in Linux.

Also, remember that since the 60s we live in a society where rudeness is rewarded.What the Baby Boomers taught us was that you can be a total jackass and if you claim it is for a good cause it is not only excused but celebrated.

That is a very good point. I'm sorry I'm out of mod points. I don't think I've very met anyone that wasn't a religious about something, even the atheists/ agnostics I've known. Of course my limited experience is not statistically significant in any way, but that observation seems to confirm my experiences.

This way of thinking annoys me. It's possible to not believe in something without having any evidence. For example, if I told you that there was an alabaster dildo slowly orbiting our solar system out in the Oort cloud, it would be impossible for you to prove otherwise, given that we lack the necessary technology to zero in on an object that small and that far away. However, it would be reasonable for you to not believe me. I think you can agree that your refusal to believe in the alabaster dildo does not constitute a religion, even though you are technically believing something without having any irrefutable evidence for that belief.

To take this one step further: what if, sometime in the future, our technology improved to the point where we could test the alabaster dildo hypothesis, and, lo and behold, there was in fact a dildo out there floating in the Oort cloud. Would you continue to insist that the dildo did not exist? No. You'd probably be surprised, but you'd just revise your position, probably, and start wondering how on earth that dildo got out there in the first place. This is the fundamental difference between a religious belief and a belief.

I have no doubt that some atheists would in fact continue to deny the existence of God, even if real, hard, scientific evidence for his existence could be demonstrated. But my guess is, those "religious" atheists are a small minority. Most would probably be genuinely surprised, and would probably change their minds on the spot. They're just not holding their breath.

Not believing in something that you feel to be unlikely is not the same as unwavering religious belief. Hell, there are lots of religious people that discount scientifically testable findings simply because they contradict what some old shepherd dudes wrote a couple of millenia ago. This is an example of unwavering religious belief. Even in light of evidence to the contrary, their self-delusion persists.

Not collecting stamps is a hobby if you meet with your weekly "not stamp-collectors" group and discuss how not collecting stamps is the better way of being and share support stories for not-stamp-collecting and write books on how you can be a very happy not-stamp-collector and find meaning in it.
Just like atheism is a religion when you go once a week to your CASH meeting to be with other "like-minded" people and give support, yada yada yada.

A true Linux user has a moral responsibility to spread awareness of Linux and all its wonders to the wandering souls of the world. Were it not for the Enlightenment brought forth from these Disciples of Torvalds we would all be condemned to an eternity in the fiery pits of welded-hood doom. Amen brothers!

Users who call up a company they have no relation to in order to tell them their tech decisions are bad are complete morons.

Even if you aren't a customer of a company or a citizen of a state you aren't a member of, you still should have the inherent right to express your dissatisfaction of their policies towards other members of the world.

Not that I'm going to spend my free time to send angry letters to Oracle, but I'll support the right of anyone who does.

The word "Linux" has been used for years to signify either the OS or the kernel, depending on context. In fact, usually when people refer to the kernel itself, they will call it "the Linux kernel," while calling the OS "Linux." While your nitpick may be technically correct, you are fighting a battle that was already lost a long time ago, kind of like the battle to call the OS "GNU/Linux."

At job interviews, I always mention "hacking" as one of my interests. If the interviewer reacts shocked or confused, I know I don't want to work for that company. I've been escorted out by security more than once.

Can we stop doing this now? People around here know that "Linux" is a kernel. We get it. We've gotten it for the past 10 years. Here's the deal: when used in this context - and just about any other - the term "Linux" refers "a Linux distribution". You realize this, right? Of course.

They might call it "RHEL" or "Mandriva" or "GNU/Linux" if they want to drink from the FSF evangelical cup, but mostly they call it "Linux". Everyone does. It's part of the tech lingo now.

Get over it and stop trying to be clever by posting pointless semantic retorts like these.

Can we stop doing this now? People around here know that "Linux" is a kernel. We get it. We've gotten it for the past 10 years. Here's the deal: when used in this context - and just about any other - the term "Linux" refers "a Linux distribution". You realize this, right? Of course.

Agreed. People should also stop saying "Bzzzt... wrong". It makes them sound like a pretentious turd.

'Linux is an operatings system kernel'Linux is an operating system. The kernel is the only and only component of the operating system. Everything else is just a library, application, or memory resident application that runs on top of that kernel. You must be confusing an operating system with an operating environment for users, those are called operating system distributions or just distributions.

The confusion in these terms have been inappropriately spread by Microsoft and Apple who refer to their distribu

Actually, they kind of do, they just don't go out of their way to help you do it. You can load OpenDarwin, and run a generic X environment on top, or if you're truly ambitious, X + SheepShaver and get an OS-7 environment with Darwin underneath. You can (allegedly) replace Explorer in Windows with *whatever*, and still run the core Windows OS under your chosen user environment.

If you do either, almost none of your applications will still work, hence why it's not a real popular activity, but the underlyi

Correction Linux is the Linux Operating System's kernel. That's right Linux is a kernel, an operating system, and an operating environment.

Because we're free to use GNU/Free software as long as we stick to the GPL, which lets me call the OS Fred if i want to.

In fact I can create a new operating system, call it something like Penguin OS, use a Linux Kernel and the GNU utilities. Because its mine call whatever I want. And as long as I stick to the terms of the GPL, (And other trademarks regulations), there

Why not take it a step further?Considering that a freaking lot of the base utilities in Unix came from BSD, and another huge part is inspired on SRV/4 I therefore decree:The OS formerly know by the impures as GNU/Linux should now be called AT&TSRV4/SOLARIS/BSD/GNU Linux.If you use KDE, please append Microsoft Windows to the name, because kde is largerly a copy of windows explorer interface.Similarly, write your letters to Microsoft and demand them to rename the late windows 95 as BSD/Windows 95 because they have used BSD tcp/ip code.

Look, guys, going around irritating users by calling them idiots, who are really our customers and should be treated as such (whether commercial users or not) is the kind of thing that makes the Linux community look like a bunch of elitist snobs who shout things like 'RTFA' at every question.

Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux? If you're one of the people calling Opes a bunch of idiots, look in the mirror.

Maybe they are your customers but my customers earn that classification by giving me some form of payment. Customers are someone you have an obligation to. Nobody has an obligation to these guys except Oracle.

They are not my customers. The people who call them have no relation to me. You are trying to treat people who use Linux as a single coherent body. It's a phantom, there is no Linux community, there is no coherent body, just a load of individuals.

Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux?

Complete rubbish. There's a huge investment in legacy systems and the added complication of a deliberately maintained network effect.

I think you got it wrong. I read the post at the link you provided and this guy wasn't a zealot. He's *NOT* saying "contact companies that use Microsoft productsn and bash them". He said that he's tired of the zealots who bash Microsoft and their products and said "instead of complaining here in a forum that Microsoft doesn't monitor, contact Microsoft directly and complain there".

You know, I think this kind of incident is really unfortunate, in that it really is going to do nothing other than bolster a negative perception of the Linux community. A company deploys a distro of Linux, and is immediately subject to a barrage of criticism for selecting that particular distro. Would those complaining about the use of Unbreakable Linux rather the company had instead chosen to be an all-Windows environment?

Another aspect I don't get in all of this is the preference for Red Hat over Oracle. Red Hat is a great company that has contributed a lot to Linux, but to be fair, they are also a company that does not provide free access to downloads of their signature product (which is why we have CentOS), and a company the CEO of which once stated that Windows was a superior alternative to Linux for desktop users (admittedly a few years ago). Oracle, on the other hand, makes Unbreakable Linux freely availible to anyone who wants to download it, and additionally, also gave a major boost to Linux when it started supporting Linux as a platform in the late 1990s.

To be clear, though, I am not saying that Oracle has a better record than Red Hat, rather, that the two have both made contributions to the Linux community, and for a large number of people to attack a company for using Unbreakable Linux as opposed to RHEL is, in my opinion, retarded.

I dont particularly like Redhat either. But Oracle is very similar from what I am told.Also, now that I am out in the real world of work I seem to have found myself supporting a bunch of linux servers. And guess what? they run Redhat. Not my choice, but I kinda like getting paid and replacing them is too costly to be worth bothering with.

If Oracle supported SunOne ASP I might recommend switching but as it is, the only other option I could suggest that anyone might have supported would have been Solaris and

If Oracle supported SunOne ASP I might recommend switching but as it is, the only other option I could suggest that anyone might have supported would have been Solaris and that was too different from what we were used to.

What good would switching to Oracle do, other than changing the price (which you don't personally pay for) and the brand name slapped onto the product, considering that for all intents and purposes, Unbreakable Linux IS RHEL?

Please explain how CentOS exists if RedHat does not "provide free access to downloads of their signature product".

I'm pretty sure it's clear the GP meant in "easy to install ISO form". As is well known and mentioned in other posts RedHat makes all the source, and binaries, available for their products but you have to get the pieces yourself and put them together into something usable. If you want a complete, no fuss package you go with CentOS.

Amiga Persecution Syndrome, redux. That company is lucky the calls calling them idiots didn't devolve into conference calls with the callers fighting over RedHat vs. Debian GNU/Linux vs. Gentoo. It's a worrisome trend in OS devotees, as I remember people being VMS partisans, or OS/360 worshippers (which is fair, since miss a sacrifice to a 3090 and it's likely to eat a programmer or two in retribution), but very few systems inspire this rabid, lunatic-fringe, behaviour. Amigas, OS/2, and Linux. There is

We use Linux for a lot of things here where I work, but if we moved to some other OS, or some other comapny changed platforms, I wouldn't take it personally. I only care if they offer inferior service or compromise data, which is more a matter of ops.

Seriously, this is what gives Linux a bad reputation. To take time out of your day to harass a company for changing Linux support/distro is just insane. People wonder why getting companies to switch to LInux is so hard? It's this crazy rep that Linux has of being filled with "maverick/crazy" users.
Way to go guys in further perpetuating a negative Linux stereotype. Thanks for helping get Linux accepted in the enterprise as a professional system(s).

This is not good at all for getting Linux used more often. It seams Linux are the most difficult users to please. If each "getting-Linux-implemented-somewhere" project is backslashed like this one, it becomes harder to get Linux implemented anywhere.

What on Earth does anyone think contacting some organisation (that they probably have no contact with in day to day life) to tell them that they're idiots is going to achieve? More to the point, if it's not a public sector organisation and the people calling aren't shareholders, what the hell business is it of theirs?

A common selling point of open source is "if you don't like the support, you have the freedom to go elsewhere". Reading between the lines of the article, it seems like Opes have done just that. So as soon as someone decides they don't like the support and they want to go elsewhere, this is what they get? One thing I'm sure of, it certainly isn't going to encourage anyone to adopt Red Hat.

I bet the reaction would be totally different if they moved to Oracle Linux from some other commercial Unix.

What on Earth does anyone think contacting some organisation (that they probably have no contact with in day to day life) to tell them that they're idiots is going to achieve?

Raise public awareness? Change? Admittedly, on the face of it, I'm eager to dismiss actions are juvenile but, then again, I smirk at the folks in Starbucks buying or selling "fair trade" coffee. None of them, I'd bet, has ever travelled to Latin America or even seen a coffee bean before it's been picked and roasted, or met a coffee

The key difference here is those who called and insulted the company were not activists. They were fanboys.Activists lobby, actively promote change or raise awareness for things that will make life better. if not for themselves, for many other people. Fair trade activists wish to preserve ways of life and local economies. Electronic freedom activists lobby against restrictive copyright laws and promote freedom across digital mediums.

These assclowns wanted to belittle a company because the major corporati

What a nice selling point for Gnu/Linux. "Choose our software and when you switch vendors we will summon the power of the fanboys." This is insane, I use free software as much as I can, everywhere it fits. Behaviour like this just states that while OSS is ready for the enterprise, the community is not. Grow up, let Unbreakable Linux either thrive or die. Either way the community improves for it. You really think it's impossible for Unbreakable to contribute back to Red Hat, or supply something different wit

Hardware support is going to be an issue for anyone that chooses to run Oracle Linux. Hardware vendors certify only certain OS makes and models on their boxes, and so far I haven't seen Oracle Linux on the certified lists. It's no fun fighting with your vendor for support and being told you have to install a supported OS before they'll acknowledge that the error you're seeing is caused by their hardware and not the OS that you chose to run.

Oracle might think they're onto something here, but I doubt it's going to catch on until they either A) sell their own hardware and support the entire stack from top to bottom, or B) get their OS certified by most or all of the major hardware vendors -- including card manufacturers like QLogic, EMC, Emulex, and Intel, who like the box vendors, only certify to certain OSes.

Hang on for a second... I thought that one of the MAIN REASONS that Linux people push Linux so hard is because it avoids scary lock-in. Linux is Linux, right? Switching should be no big deal for customers, since there's no worry about lock-in using Linux... right? I honestly have no idea because every time I've tried Linux, I've never gotten it set up to the point of being functional.

I thought that one of the MAIN REASONS that Linux people push Linux so hard is because it avoids scary lock-in. Linux is Linux, right? Switching should be no big deal for customers, since there's no worry about lock-in using Linux... right?

Linux is not the problem. Oracle is the problem. But then, Red Hat fanatics are bar none the worst fanboys in my ever-so-humble opinion. Gentoo users are often like rice boys, but they're using the system and I have no beef with them. I'm a Ubuntu user these days, so clearly I have nothing against Ubuntu users (I'm not one of them self-hating types.) But Red Hat users, which I stopped being around 6.1, are clinging desperately to a distribution that doesn't care about them unless they have shitpiles of money. That goes for Fedora, too. ObDisclaimer: This is all my opinion. You may feel differently. If I think you're being a bozo in your reply to this comment, I may flame you. You have been warned.

Oracle is one of the great anti-freedom evils of our time simply because they backed the national ID database. Corporations have no heart - Oracle is willing to get behind such a proposal simply to sell their product.

You are welcome to forget! Everyone else does anyway. But Oracle is bad and wrong and supporting Oracle is therefore bad and wrong.

Red Hat fanatics are bar none the worst fanboys in my ever-so-humble opinion. Gentoo users are often like rice boys, but they're using the system and I have no beef with them. I'm a Ubuntu user these days, so clearly I have nothing against Ubuntu users (I'm not one of them self-hating types.) But Red Hat users, which I stopped being around 6.1, are clinging desperately to a distribution that doesn't care about them unless they have shitpiles of money. That goes for Fedora, too

Sadly they also make a solid product. Painful, archaic, requiring a lot of support work, but solid. The alternatives are what: Microsoft (far more evil), and PgSQL (not there yet, but coming along).

Postgresql is perhaps not yet at the point where I would tell an Oracle installation they needed to drop
what they're doing and switch, but Postgresql is definitely far enough along that there's no way that any
one should set-up a new system using Oracle -- which is to say that Oracle is already a legacy produ

That may be true, but I'm turned off of Ubuntu by all the Ubuntu fanatics that criticize every other distribution for "not being Ubuntu", and calling people stupid for using a distribution that isn't their beloved Ubuntu. I'm happy that they found a distro that they like, but their aggressiveness towards users of non-Ubiuntu distros can periodically be intense.

All of the people I know who use Gentoo use it because of the amazing build toolset and customizability. I can compile everything with "-g" and debug anything on the system through glibc... and see source listings at any stack frame. That's incredibly valuable

You should try a more mainstream distro again. They've anticipated this need, so you don't need to rebuild anything. RedHat-based systems (and I believe SuSE and Debian/Ubuntu as well) all have a build system which extracts debugging symbols from binaries, placing them in -debuginfo packages along with the source code. gdb has been modified to look for debugging info in this location. You can run gstack on a coredump, realize you don't have the right debugging symbols, do a yum install foo-debuginfo, run it again, and get the right information. (And even have list do the right thing.) You can audit exactly how much disk space these packages use with a simple du -sk/usr/lib/debug and remove them without rebuilding. There's more information on the Fedora wiki [fedoraproject.org].

CFLAGS customization makes Gentoo users (particularly ricers) feel superior, but in practice, I don't see any advantages. (I've never seen a situation where it made a worthwhile performance boost. There was an interesting thread about this on pgsql-performance a while back.) One major disadvantage is obvious: long compile times. A couple less so: it's harder to reproduce bugs affected by compiler options, and you need a separate scheme for updating systems which can't do the compile themselves.

I used to recompile the kernel with flags for my hardware. Now the system has been modularized, so unless I'm writing kernel code myself, I just use the RedHat vendor kernel which has been extensively QAed. In time, the same thing will happen to userspace binaries with optional dependencies: instead of detecting at configure time that I have support therefore modifying the base package's code, we'll move toward add-in modules that get dlload()ed in to provide the external functional that dependencies are needed for.

Odd... I've never met anyone who was actually fanatical about RedHat. Or even really liked it. It usually comes down to either "we can buy support for it" or "it installs and is hands-off after that." Back when I still used Fedora, I fell into the latter category... tolerating it, because it worked.

RedHat makes a good system, and they make contributions that benefit everyone [fedoraproject.org]. That you don't know anyone fanatical about it is not surprising. You're a Gentoo guy who hasn't used any other system in a while, so your sample's pretty skewed. And it's rare for people to get fanatical about the dominant system, particularly people who have an irrational fear of companies with working business models.

drinkypoo wrote:
>Oracle is one of the great anti-freedom evils of our time simply because they backed the national ID database.

I don't think it's quite fair to condemn Oracle for supporting national ID cards. There are some privacy/anonymity violations that I think are serious problems, but the national ID card doesn't seem to me to be much of a problem. The GPS tracking devices required in everyones phone for the obviously bogus emergency call excuse, cameras being installed everywhere to track peopl

Oracle IS the problem. It would've been nice if the poster(one who posts) or the article had explanied that while this is childish, there's more to it than first appears.Red Hat is huge for a Linux distro but has nowhere near Oracle's $$. Microsoft, who Red Hat directly competes with, has more $$ than anyone.

Now Oracle decides to compete with...Linux(?!)Fine, they should because the competition will only make the community stronger. Except maybe they should've put some work into developing a distro. They di

Full disclosure; I'm typing this in Firefox, running on Fedora Core 6, an OS Red Hat gave me for free.

Well, if you want to be a red hat beta tester, that's up to you. I mean, I want to be a Ubuntu beta tester, but in order to become one I had to edit my apt-sources and s/edgy/feisty/ and do a dist-upgrade. All Fedora users are beta testers.

and I'm genTOO busy to use a distro that eats all my time. (It's a terrible pun but i WANT you to flame me!)

Well, if you want to be a red hat beta tester, that's up to you. I mean, I want to be a Ubuntu beta tester, but in order to become one I had to edit my apt-sources and s/edgy/feisty/ and do a dist-upgrade. All Fedora users are beta testers.

If you don't like Fedora, don't forget that it's not the only free-as-in-beer RedHat system. My servers run CentOS [centos.org], which is essentially RHEL recompiled. I don't have "shitpiles of money", but I still use a solid system that RedHat built. The only practical difference i

Kind of off topic, but related.Why does the disto seem to matter so much. I'm a developer and I get the idea of linking to some extent, but why is that I can have a Windows app that was desinged for 95 that still runs fine in 2003, but when I get a binary of for an older version of Linux I have to recompile it for newer other distros.

We recently wanted to run Snort, but we didn't want to use a support distro. We ended up recompiling the code, but it seems like a bit much to me.

The sales rep from Microsoft now cruises in. Cool, calm, collected, laid back. "Hey, if you want to run a mixed environment, more power to you. We respect that. We'll just do our best to prove to you that Microsoft can handle all of your needs." He says with a wink and a smile. Meanwhile, long-haired Gnuzealots sharpen their stakes and light their pitchforks.

Near the end of TFA is the important reason for them to get their support from Oracle:

They're running Oracle's application server and database on some of the mission-critical servers.

With Oracle supporting both the application and the OS under it there's no time and money lost to finger-pointing when something gets hosed. Instead a single team buckles down and fixes it immediately.

(Presuming they ever need service. One of the comments from Red Hat indicates that they may never have actually had to USE the service contract. Take THAT, Microsoft! B-) )

Anyone has a right to bundle and sell a Linux distro and more choice is better for the future of the platform. I venture a wild guess that with Oracle Linux, you might have less problems installing Oracle software. Let RedHat come up with some other advantages.

RedHat support is some of the worst support I've ever seen in the marketplace. Indeed, it is far worse than Microsoft's (which is pathetic). All the companies that I'm affiliated with use Suse if they want support nowadays. (and I HATE the patent deal that Novell did with Microsoft, but Redhat is so damn miserable at support, there isn't much of a choice).

Novell's support isn't great, but at least they call you back. I don't think I've ever gotten Redhat to call back on any support issue over the 4 years I was a customer. (The only reaction I've ever seen from their customer support is to quietly close my tickets that stayed open for more than a year -- without ever putting in an explanatory note or fixing the problem, of course)

If that company wants to go with Oracle so they can actually get real support, more power to them. They could switched to using Microsoft Windows. . . but they didn't - and for that I'm glad.

Surely if people feel strongly that something someone is doing is wrong they should be able to talk about it and protest about it?

There's a lot of talk here about "How dare they tell Opes that they're being idiots!" Like there's something wrong with making your opinion of something heard.

If people only took an interest in something that directly affected them, this world would be a far shallower place. Surely inconvience is a price to pay for the chance to say what you want to say? As far as I can see, no one's being a jackass - there's no direct impairment of the companys trade - people are simply calling them up and telling them they're idiots.

Its one thing to go on Slashdot and say they are idiots. Its another to complain directly to a company who is running child labor camps in 3rd world countries. Its another ENTIRELY when someone who has no business relationship with a company calls this company to tell them they are idiots for choosing a particular OS support company.

The latter is not only a complete waste of time for everyone involved, but it shows a real lack of civility for those trying to make the case f

Meanwhile, McLaren told ZDNet Australia Opes had acquired Red Hat support subscriptions with the purchase of two servers from channel partner Dell. The hardware vendor then was responsible for providing Red Hat support to Opes.

I guess nobody reads the articles anymore, but appearently they weren't even RedHat customers. The ran RHEL but only by way of Dell. It would seem to me that if they wanted the best support maybe they should actually have tried paying RedHat for a frickin support contract. RedHat is a mighty generous company but they're not going to call you up out of the blue and offer you support just for the hell of it.

My personal opinion is that they are going from one bad support situation (DELL) to another (Oracle), but it's their business and they have every right to make dumbass decisions. As for people calling them out of the blue to tell them how retarded they are, I have to call bullshit. I don't think anybody knows or cares who these people are or what distro they run.

I know a lot of people in the linux community (as well as being a LUG pres.) and I've only run across one person in the last 15 years that was a complete asshole about using Linux and nothing else. Actually, he didn't limit that idealism to just linux - it was basically whatever he was doing was the right way, and everyone else was wrong. That's a pretty small percentage of nut jobs. Take a good look through Bruce Peren's petition*, you'll see the exact opposite of what Opes is talking about. This is also something that has upset and angered a lot of people, but the vast majority of signees (3000+) have kept their comments reasonable. This seems to be more in line with the Linux community I know of.

The problem is this. In the United States, RHEL is the standard Linux Distribution for business. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts. They have the market penetration. They, as a company, survive off of support licenses. This is for patches, upgrades, whatever. This includes the guarantee to backport security fixes into dead software (Have RHEL3 and support, you are getting fixes for packages that the original coders have long since abandoned as they've moved forward with releases). It gives you the ability to tell your boss that 7 years from now an RHEL 5 system will *STILL* have vendor support for all security issues. That is something that Microsoft isn't doing. (Want a DST patch for Win2k - you'll have to pay MS for it, even though it is only a 7 year old OS).
The problem is. Unbreakable linux is *NOT* a distribution. It is a support agreement to provide support for RHEL systems. They are directly support RHEL3 and RHEL4 via a separate patch path. This undercuts Red Hat and their pricing, basically taking a company that while strong, is hardly rock solid (I believe they made somewhere around $450 million dollars and had a $50 million dollar annual profit). The fall of Red Hat will also (quite obviously) mean the fall of RHEL, and quite possible the Fedora project (Their supported test ground). Where does that leave Oracle? Oracle will no longer have anyone to support, since they are basically using the GPL to abuse the Red Hat porting process and merely paying for an alternate distribution path. When Red Hat dies, Oracle Unbreakable will die as well. The end result? They kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
This is why the move by Oracle is dangerous. Getting into the business is one thing, but they are taking direct aim at Red Hat, and abusing the GPL by taking Red Hat code modifications and redistributing them via their own network and charging for it. This is also why there is a general disdain for what Oracle is doing among the linux community. Now, how much of this paragraph turns out to be true, and how much is fud is where the crux of the issue lies. Perhaps Oracle will have their own teams doing backports, and perhaps they will eventually move off of RHEL support onto their own distro, but until they make this move, you can be certain the RH crowd is going to continue these unfortunate tactics.

The sad part is that I was doing it as a joke rather than a grammar flame. The real grammar flamers would have been sure to get it right the first time. The second time, I was actually distracted by trying to get my html tags right and wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Ah well, even good comedians flub a joke now and then.